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Why not just extremely simple, plain HTML? No frameworks, not even CSS. In fact, you could make your life even simpler by using markdown files and having the br
by temporallobe 5y ago
Why not just extremely simple, plain HTML? No frameworks, not even CSS. In fact, you could make your life even simpler by using markdown files and having the browser convert that to HTML in real time with a single JS library (there are a few, I am not promoting anything one particular), so it doesn’t even require a “back end”! Plain HTML, while not having all the “portable” attributes of PDF, is still pretty darn robust and most browsers handle printing (or conversion to PDF) quite well.
- prox 5y agoI think it is because PDF is a document first, and HTML often hard to save/file. PDF is also able to create with design in mind, in a document creation app, which after decades of HTML is still hard to do I think.
- BenjiWiebe 5y agoHTML isn't hard to save and file on a computer, and on phones it seems everything is hard to save and file.
- prox 5y agoYou are right in a technical sense, but if I ask someone who is a low level user to save a webpage, most don’t know how to do that. It’s not front and center or even encouraged! This makes a big difference for adaption.
- dredmorbius 5y agoSome of the listed benefits don't apply. Notably paginated (PDF) vs. scrolled navigation, but also features such as formulae displays and specific typesetting / layout elements, in-page bookmarks, highlighting, and notes. For shorter documents that's not much of a problem. For anything much over ~chapter length (about 20 pages or 10,000 words), navigation within a single HTML page becomes painful. Well below that level on smaller devices